Be Lyke Myke

Myke Smitley

Tonight I found myself standing in line at the Lotus Cafe behind a man in his seventies with long, white, flowing hair. He ordered a turkey burger, which is exactly what I was waiting to order. The young cashier had lit up when she saw him and they talked like old friends who had missed each other dearly. After placing his order and sitting in a booth, another young employee walked over and affectionately engaged him in conversation. The two workers clearly adored him. I’ve learned to not be shy about introducing myself to interesting people so I approached the man and said, “You know everybody!” He laughed and we started talking. When I asked if he would like to sit by himself or if he wanted company, he cheerfully invited me to join him, adding that his name was Myke.

That’s when the coincidences (beyond a preference for turkey burgers) began flowing freely. After establishing that we were both from the Midwest (him from Ohio and me from Minnesota) and members of Self-Realization Fellowship, Myke asked what I did and I told him I was a writer. He was a writer too, he said, and in fact had recently published a book on spirituality he had been working on for fourteen years.

WHAT???

I told him that I had just published a book on spirituality I had been working on for fourteen years!!!

The synchronicities didn’t end there. The next day, I received this e-mail from Myke:

I really enjoyed our connection and conversation at the Lotus Cafe Sunday. I visited your website and appreciated it very much. I was impressed by the testimonials, and I was especially impressed by your notes on how you arrived at the title, Through God’s Eyes. This is mainly because it adds yet another synchronicity to our connection (mutual orders of turkey burgers, 14-year writing projects, Midwest roots). Rather than explain it, I have taken the liberty to attach a few paragraphs from a section in The Great Circle’s 3rd chapter. If you have time to read it, I think you will get the same inner smile I got when I read your notes on your book title—a smile of appreciation for Spirit’s ushering of kindred devotees into the same wavelengths.

I did indeed get an inner smile as I read the excerpt that Myke attached. In my book, I had explained that I had arrived at the title, Through God’s Eyes, by virtue of a story centering on a lion’s savage treatment of a gazelle. Myke had used the same reference point in his own book:

The sphere of Nature is a grand role model for wholesomeness. It is a fully integrated and self-balancing system. Nature is a self-balancing elemental system consisting of systems-within-systems reaching outward: from atoms, through molecules, cells, organisms, species, and ecosystems within ecosystems within a global ecosystem within solar, stellar, and galactic systems; all reaching out to probable systems yet undiscovered. And, according to certain right brain Ways of Seeing—as found in some Eastern philosophies and in deeper levels of North American Indian wisdom—there is no real conflict going on anywhere within the dynamics of all these divisions of Nature. (By conflict, I am meaning inharmonious relationship and accompanying enmities such as hostility and repugnance; instead of meaning an elemental phenomenon of opposing or colliding forces.)

The normal left brain response to that last assertion would be something like, “Well, the rams fighting to mate with the ewes is a conflict; and the lion’s fangs in the throat of the gazelle would certainly represent a conflict in the gazelle’s experience!”

But even from a left brain Way of Seeing, we could reason that this may not be so. We humans—with our brilliant higher mental capacities, our vitally-conscious self-awareness, and our dynamic conscious identities—tend to imaginatively project portions of our vibrant gifts into animal minds and experiences. Most animals’ conscious awareness might best be described as life-awareness, instead of self-awareness. Who knows what it is like to experience the violent dramas of life through the relative pall of the animal’s instinctive, automatically active/reactive, and moment-centered consciousness; especially if both the scientists and the mystics are right, and animals do not experience pain as keenly as do we humans?

In human conflicts, we, like the fighting rams, mentally experience the presence of our adversary with a conscious sensory awareness of that adversary as an at-hand force of resistance. But, unlike the ram, we also mentally experience our challenger with a self-conscious awareness of “the other one”; and we also experience him or her within a complex intellectual definition of exactly who or what “the other one” is and what all of that means to us. And usually, we emotionally experience the process of resolving the conflict as an undesirable and burdensome necessity somehow thrust upon us by the fault of “the other one.”

It is most unlikely that the fighting rams experience all that. It is very likely that each ram, while following powerful urges to concentrate on the ewes in heat, first experiences the presence of the other ram as no more than a force of distraction in a perceptible form, and then as a force of resistance in a perceptible form. Raw senses would immediately let the instinctual center of the ram know that this particular form and force of resistance poses not a threat to its life, but poses an obstacle to its dominant urge-in-progress. Its genetic/instinctual program would immediately react with the appropriate chemistry, and the organic “machine” of the ram—not blind with rage, but “blind” without thought processes—would automatically become the form for a force of projection that would increase in strength until it experienced the force of resistance against it either dissipate or overwhelm. Free of ego, identity, and intellect, its center of awareness (life awareness) would non-judgmentally experience all of Nature’s powerful forces in the same way; much like a small child might experience the forces of a surging ocean wave while riding on a surfboard with its parent.

Observing the rams battling, we see and identify with the intensity in their eyes, identify with their willful rush of aggression, hear their horns’ powerful collisions echo in the mountains; and the entire dust-raising spectacle tends to convince us that the animals are embroiled in an angry conflict that is in the same spirit as human conflict. But the animals, who are uncomplicated and unencumbered by such relative judgments as “desirable” and “undesirable,” “good” and “bad,” are probably experiencing all aspects of their life in a relatively dim and somewhat neutral sense of purpose and fulfillment. Pain might be experienced simply as moments of heightened life-awareness for the animal. And what we interpret, for the gazelle in the lion’s jaws, to be a horrible experience of dire fear while in the awful convulsions of death, may simply be to the gazelle some type of primal excitement and primal “orgasmic” surrender of life-awareness. These would be experiences that most of us can neither understand nor relate to as being experiences with no conflict.

I believe that the mystics have the deeper understanding of the matter, and that there is no real conflict going on anywhere in all the dynamic divisions of Nature.

Regarding our kinship in Gurus and in LIfe’s calling, I continue to be moved by how Spirit and Masters have guided us to call out to the world the truths of so many of the same principles. There are so many truth-hungry souls out there, and various karmic-dharmic types do and will need sources that resonate with their own communication needs. Many—maybe most—could neither be nourished nor find their way through the style of communication I chose for The Great Circle; yet—since our Masters inspired it—I am sure it must be perfect for some. Likewise it is with your creations. And I am sure that our Masters, and the Masters of other paths, are inspiring and blessing other writers to call out those same truths in their own personal tones of the Voice we all serve.

I appreciated that both of us were guided to present the same ideas or principles in more than one way. I endeavored—in a style that is complex and tomey—to present principles and ideas in right brain communication styles and also in left brain styles. In a style that I wish I were much better with, you give a deceptively-short and simple presentation of a deep truth, then turn that gem slightly by quoting other truth-givers’ perceptions of that same truth; thereby helping the reader to more easily assimilate it. (I love it!) I created mountains in The Great Circle, and you created gems in Through God’s Eyes; and mountains and gems are simply equal manifestations of the same Cosmological archetype of Integrity. I also appreciate the enormous investment of time and energy it must have taken you to create all those match-ups.

Further, by reading your excerpts from Chapter 13, I could see that by including your own personal story of learning at the end of each chapter, you have created an overall triangulation for the particular truths which you presented in two ways before; this even lubricating further readers’ ability to assimilate communications, as both triangulation and storytelling calls in right brain dynamics. Well done!

Myke’s 605-page mountain of a book has plenty of gems itself. Between his tome and my 570-page book, I hope that our fourteen years of effort will offer comfort, insight and inspiration to left-brained and right-brained truth-seeking souls everywhere.

Click here for more information about Through God’s Eyes.Click here to ask Phil to add you to his e-mail list for updates on his blog and books.

Here is a two-minute video introduction to Through God’s Eyes.

Want to learn more about Through God’s Eyes? Here is a free 40-page PDF sampler from the book that includes:

• an overview of the book
• the complete table of contents
• the Foreword by Caroline Myss
• my Introduction
• chapter excerpts
• a sample end-of-chapter story
• endorsements from authors and thought leaders

Here is a three-minute video that introduces you to Phil and his book. Click here to order Sixty Seconds. Click here to ask Phil to add you to his e-mail list for updates on his blog and books.

Reading this book is like spending a few minutes face to face with each of the contributors and listening to their personal stories. Click here to read unsolicited testimonials from readers. Learn more by visiting the official Sixty Seconds website.

Sixty Seconds was one of three finalists in the General Interest/How-To category at the 12th annual Visionary Awards presented by COVR (Coalition of Visionary Resources) in Denver on June 27, 2009.